Friday, September 30, 2016

When I lived in Cambridge, Mass., I hung out with a lot of comic book fans, illustrators, and comic book dealers. Some of them published not only sales catalogs but fan magazines about comics and the comic book lifestyle. They commissioned me to do spot illustrations for their zine pages. This little panel illustrates the fun (?) fans have when they buy a whole lot of stuff at a convention, bring it home, and read it. Believe it or not, back issues of comics like Marvel and DC were not available for buyers before about the mid-60s. This group of fans is typical of the era I was in: overwhelmingly male, young, and reading-obsessed. Note the central figure's "Harvard" sweatshirt. I wonder what he's doing these days.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

I enjoyed making the fan art title pages because I could use decorative typefaces. In those days before easy computer type selection and printing, I had to copy the title by hand onto the page. This worked surprisingly well as long as I planned it out carefully.

According to Marion Zimmer Bradley, Darkover had numerous sentient species well before humans arrived. They were all basically humanoid but some had characteristics of animal species as well. The oldest and most elusive were the "chieri," a tall, delicate-looking species of humanoid reminiscent of elves. They were all endowed with psychic powers, and even in the frozen winters of Darkover they were immune to the cold and went naked or wore just a thin wrap. Most interestingly, chieri were physically androgynous. They could turn into either male or female, depending on the desires of their partners. (Bradley borrowed this idea from Ursula Le Guin, who in turn borrowed it from Balzac's "Seraphita.")

Chieri could interbreed with humans, which happened a lot, so the human Darkovans were actually psychically powered hybrids.

This story, in my dim recollection, involved a youth who had the psychic talent of communicating with animals. Living in a primitive medieval society, he was constantly assaulted by the pain and distress of brutalized animals. He ran away into the forest intending to kill himself but instead the wandering chieri found him and took him in among them, where he learned to control his powers. Then, instead of sending him back to the village, they set him in a place where he could be a protector for the animals of forest, farm, and road.

If this wasn't the way the story went, I apologize to W. Marshall Kyle the author, it was rather a while ago on planet Darkover let alone here on Earth. The magazine with the story is somewhere in my collection but I'm not getting it out.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Just before the Internet exploded into our world, some fans who knew other fans in other countries asked me to do a cover for a science fiction fan magazine they were starting up:

"International SF/Media Review." I could do anything I wanted for the cover, so I did a science-fictional adventure theme involving flying people with anti-grav packs, surprising vultures in the air. The zine was to be shared among a circle including Canadian, British, and possibly French and German readers. I did the cover, pictured here, but only a few issues of the magazine were ever published. Within a year, maybe two, the Internet would globalize our lives far more than any paper mag taking two weeks to get to England.

Black ink on heavy "Stonehenge" illustration paper, 8" x 10", August 1991. Click for a larger view. (Click what? What is this thing you call a "mouse?" Is Windows really the future?)

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

I get catalogues of industrial and farm equipment. The only things I buy from them, and rarely, are equipment for my indoor garden, which never grows weed and is now out on the balcony. At the end of October I take my plants indoors and turn on the big light. Meanwhile I love the catalogs because they show machinery and greenhouse buildings, things I like to look at. The machines in the "Grower's Supply" catalog are especially attractive, but instead of buying them, I use them as fantasy inspiration. Here are three industrial Tikis from some metallic Hawaii. They are actually water pump fastenings and one sprinkler head on the right. I have always wanted a greenhouse but it doesn't do well with apartment living.Black tech pen ink on sketchbook page and Photoshop, 4" x 3 1/2", September 27, 2016.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Here's another illustration from the Darkover fan story I posted a few days ago, "In the Mists of Hali." I don't remember the details but in the story a young man has to protect his little brother, who is disabled, from kidnappers who want his psychic powers. At one point the boy falls into the water and can't swim, so his brother must dive in to rescue him. This story appeared in a Darkover fan magazine which I still have in my collection. I have shelves full of fan and semi-pro magazines which have my illustrations. Maybe someday I will pull them out and look at them again. I don't want to throw them out.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

"Wine Saturday" for September was at Rappahannock Cellars, one of Northern Virginia's best wineries. The Wine Team sipped excellent vintages and sampled a cheese platter which is always welcome. I have been to Rappahannock many times and its view is always beautiful no matter what time of year it is. I am told by the wine server that Autumn is glorious there with all the bright colored leaves. But it is rather a long way to drive from my residence. The logistics of winery visiting have become more difficult these days for me, for various reasons, and I'm glad that I can hitch a ride with my wine-loving friends.

Rappahannock Cellars is blessed with a number of religious images including this statue of Jesus showing his Sacred Heart. It was Jesus who said that he was "the true vine" and at Rappahannock, so he is.

Drawing is colored pencils and ink on sketchbook page, finished in the studio, 8" x 11", September 24, 2016.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Another adaptation from the Ferit Kuyas collection: engines, gears, and pulleys from a Swiss sawmill. I enjoy copying and adapting these industrial images because drawing each one is like solving a math problem. I don't have a lot of time to do math these days though I think about it a lot. This image is full of circles, tangents, and projections. The turning gears that Kuyas photographed are gigantic and fill a whole industrial hall.Black tech pen ink on sketchbook page with photoshop touch-up, 3 1/2" x 4", September 24, 2016.

Friday, September 23, 2016

I'm hungry at an odd hour again, though for me there are no non-odd hours. I'll have a snack of cheese and crackers. But where is the cheese? The crackers taste like drywall without the cheese. But wait, there on the counter is this tiny thing which looks like a cross between a rat and a baby elephant, but it's a mini-bot, and it's rolling away from me on little wheels! And it has my cheese held in a four-digit grabber. Is this a cousin of the "Wrapped Thing?" Or is it yet another attempt for me to lie about being up-to-date in my Drawing of the Day? Perhaps it's a hallucination brought on by too many visits to Home Depot. Oh wait, there's my cheese. It's the light bulbs which weren't the right kind for the Mystic Lamp of Studio Work. Let's try this again, but not right now.Black technical pen ink on sketchbook page, 3 1/2" x 2 1/2", September 22, 2016.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

I never tire of industrial fantasies. Here the Great Wheel turns, keeping the world in motion. It's actually part of an engine in a Swiss brewery. The wheel and its works were built in 1897. The image reached me through a beautiful book of photographs by the industrial and architectural photographer Ferit Kuyas, who lives in Switzerland. Kuyas' work almost makes me want to do photography and take it more seriously than the reference snapshots I usually make. But never mind that. I used a circle template to trace the Great Wheel, which is bad practice for an Urban Sketcher. There are so many ways to cheat in sketching. I have not ripped off Kuyas enough to violate copyright, but he'll never know and you will ignore it.Black tech pen ink on interminable cluttered sketchbook page that I will not use as a format for my 2017 journal. 3 1/2" x 3", September 22, 2016.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

I did many title pages for Darkover fanzines, as well as interior illustrations. The title page had the title in a decorative font and a scene from the story. Marion Zimmer Bradley, whatever her faults may have been, started many a fantasy writer on their career. Their first "published" but non-professional work appeared in Darkover fan magazines and sometimes in anthologies curated by Bradley and her fellow professionals. Most, if not all of the writers were women. It was a womens' community and the members often approached difficult topics through this fan fiction. That would include gender, sexuality of all kinds, mental and physical illness, disability, race, religion, and size issues. In this story a young man from a fisherman's family must protect his little brother, who is mentally disabled but psychically powerful, from the authorities who want to capture him and put his powers to work.

Original drawing black ink on illustration board, about 7" x 11", April 1987.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

The Wrapped Thing is on the grass at the wall of the apartment block across from me. It is swathed in dusty black plastic sheeting and grimaces at the world like a gargoyle. It even has stubby wings like a gargoyle. I think it is a barbecue grill but I won't be sure until the denizens unwrap it for use. I didn't dare to go over and touch it myself. It could bite me or the owners would see me acting suspiciously. I sat on my outdoor art stool next to my car in the parking lot to draw this.

Monday, September 19, 2016

I'm a cat lover. You might even say I'm a cat captive. So whenever someone commissions me to illustrate a cat, I'm thrilled. My friends Elektra and Michael run a "cattery" (I love this word) in their home, where they breed prize-winning Maine Coon Cats. They are also internationally known cat judges. When they wanted a logo for their business, they came to me and I created a number of concepts, from symbolic abstract modern to old-fashioned pen drawing, like the one above. They chose this one, which I thought was too complex to be reduced in size, but it turned out just fine and you can see it on their website as well as on all their official stationery. The cats in the picture are real cats (drawn from a photograph) whose portraits I depicted accurately. Their website hasn't been updated for a while and Elektra is devoting attention nowadays to writing and publishing fantasy fiction.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

I attended the Fall Festival and "Taste of Falls Church," a pleasant yearly event that attracts a family crowd and shows off the local restaurant fare. I only had about an hour to spend there because I arrived late trying to find a parking space. Once I was there I went right to the food and had a nice little plate of handmade pasta and Bolognese sauce. There was a music area as seen in the lower half of this drawing, where a succession of country ensembles sounded forth. I walked around looking at the tables and booths where worthy causes and trinkets were marketed. I finished it off with a fashionable "cold brew" iced coffee. Before I left downtown Falls Church I was able to draw this interesting second floor balcony on a neighboring street, see drawing above.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

When I did an illustration for a piece of Darkover or other fan art, I took the text seriously and illustrated it with respect. This piece was about a young man who didn't know that he was an alien-human hybrid. I don't remember the story after that but I wanted to really do well by the illustration. If I could I usually did a title page complete with decorative typeface for the title. The architecture is borrowed from an Italian hill town. "Bredin" means "brothers" in the Darkovan language, a tongue derived from various Western European languages.

Friday, September 16, 2016

There is something better to do than complaining about clickbait or your ailments, and that is making little draws. I am not calling them "drawings" because that's too dignified for something this small. I can put a little draw anywhere. I like to use geometric forms and I use old mechanical drawings or photos of industrial sites as source material. Each one of these little draws is actually a "toon" or a humorous character. It's also not dignified enough for Steampunk, unless you might call it "Steampuff," which will merit another series of draws, please stay tooned.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Here's a character portrait from the Christopher Stasheff book I recently illustrated. This is "Ari the Crafter," the source of the magic singing rocks that overwhelm the fantasy planet of Gramarye. He's based on Jerry Garcia, and he hold Jerry's guitar, since that's how he puts the music into the rocks. He even is missing part of a finger on his right hand, just like Jerry. Long ago I was a Deadhead for a short while, and Stasheff's book brought back memories of those days.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

I have an acquaintance and sometime client who loves to run pagan, New Age, and "interfaith" conferences. If given the chance, he will organize one at any time. I've been to a number of the conferences, especially back in what seems now to be the balmy and peaceful 1980s. The management would give me an art table to show my work rather than paying me real money for the logo and T shirt and program design. Sometimes this worked out, mostly not.

In the world of interfaith conferences, usually a conference is secretly organized by one of the faiths with the intent of converting the others. Other conferences are really Pagan or New Age gatherings with a handful of friendly, usually esoteric-minded Christians and Jews. Most mainstream religions will not share space with Pagans and New Age believers, even now. And good luck finding a mainstream Muslim to participate; the only Islamic presence is usually a Sufi of one sort or another, often not really Muslim at all.

Now in this time of heightened strife I don't see much of this cooperation. My logo design above is wan and hopeful compared to the militancy and aggression of most religions. You can see my attempt to "bridge" the distance between the hard-edged modern City of Rationalism and the fanciful Asian-looking City of Faith.

Original design was black ink and computer-printed lettering on illustration board, 9" x 9", September 1994.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Having stated that photographs are banned from this blog, I must promptly post one. This is probably my favorite photograph I've ever taken. It was taken in Rome, either 1969 or 1971 which is when I lived there. I was just a teenager but in those days it was more or less safe for a young female to wander about the city alone by day. That would not be true any more in our era. I took lots of photos of antiquities and beautiful old buildings. This is an abandoned chapel near a monastery in a rather isolated part of the city. I still remember the summer heat, the bright sun, the sounds of crickets and cicadas which seemed like monks praying in the silence of the afternoon. I took a lot of shots of other parts of the building but this one with the court and the stairsteps was the best one. I wonder what happened to that little courtyard and chapel. I doubt that it still exists but you never know. Some connoisseur or architectural historian might be able to identify it. I wish I was there, but not now.

Blogger's note: I was easily able to identify this place through Google and a collection of stock photographs. Not only do these buildings still exist, but they've been nicely restored and planted about with gardens. It is the "Oratory of Sant' Andrea al Celio" built on the peaceful Caelian Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Yet another Lythande illustration? OK, this is the last one. Really. You won't have to put up with Marion Zimmer Bradley's character any more. Just to note, Lythande in the illustration is contemplating a burnt-out broken magical sword, when she must try to rid a village of a destructive zombie. Note the spying eyes in the background.

My "engraving" style will be used to illustrate something else. Let's hope that no one tries to write fan fiction about this character. The "Fantasy Magazine" is long gone and Marion has also gone to join her heroes and villains in the imaginal world. Where are my own characters, the techno-wizards of Noantriworld? They are in the hundreds of post cards of ancient edifices, sculptures, and city scenes, on the shores of Sicily watching Stromboli erupt.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

"Haven" was set in what would be around the fifteenth or sixteenth century in our history. It was "sort of Renaissancey." The various species of humanoids found in Tolkien or gaming were present, including Hobbits. But the Haven Hobbits lived modern lives, rather than in holes in the hills. These two hobbits, the Brandybuck brothers, had important occupations in the city. The one on the right with the armor, pointing a finger, was a police chief. The one on the left was a "racing and gaming broker," otherwise known as a high-stakes bookie. They squabbled as to the legality of the hobbit's business, but nothing drastic was ever done by one brother to the other. You can see by the well-decorated simulated hobbit-hole city mansion that the Hobbit brother did well in his business.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

I suppose he, or more likely she, is my version of the sad-comic space robot "Wall-E," but I've never seen the movie. I've certainly seen pictures of the character though. Maybe someday I'll see "Wall-E" the movie. I collect images of what I call "Industrial and Scientific Structures" which always inspire me to make fanciful art.

I brought home hundreds of photographs from the old house and my apartment is already filled with photographs, mostly slides. I wish digital photography had been invented sooner and then I'd just have a few hard discs with thousands of photos on them. But now I am digitizing old photos from paper, negatives, and slides and I have boxes and boxes of them already with me. I have banned photographs from this blog (except under rare circumstances) so you won't have to see any of these images. I also have hundreds of printed postcards. Most of the postcards depict ancient and medieval art and architecture and they are part of my research resources. I collected them in Europe and just looking at them brings back the experience of being in the places depicted: Baroque churches with an insane amount of detail, Medieval cloisters where I can still hear the birds and the fountains, and mosaics from the Byzantine era. Some of these are either duplicates or no longer relevant and I will give them away. They are not valuable as collectibles but someone will appreciate them.

Friday, September 9, 2016

Deryni author Katherine Kurtz liked setting some of her story events in dark mysterious places, under castles, in caves, at night, or in crypts like this one. I didn't have a story to work from on this piece of fan art, but I just put the medieval mysterious elements together as well as an empowered Deryni monk holding magical "handfire." This was from a time when I was putting a LOT of inkwork into my drawings, like the Lythande illustration you just saw. I would have shown this piece earlier but I had left out the monk's feet and lower robe edge. With the handfire magic of Photoshop I was able to re-size the picture and draw in the bottom of the figure with digital inking.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

I brought back boxes and boxes of old photographs from the house. If I didn't gather them up and save them, they would just be thrown out. I've begun looking through them to see just what all these images are. Some boxes contain hundreds of post cards with images of famous art or sculpture on one side. I will sort through these and probably discard them as they are not worth anything even as collectables.

There were the usual family photos, often with people whom only I can identify. That is a job for later. What I didn't expect were my mother's photos of art models. I found numerous slides of the art model nudes, but I didn't know they had been printed (in my dad's home darkroom) for further use. Many of these art model images were bad to begin with, poorly printed or hard to decipher. These went into the bin. Some other images, all of them non-pornographic tasteful female nudes, went into a save file and I scanned a few of them to digital.

These art sessions where my mother drew the model took place in a meeting room on the upper floor of an elegant Anglican church in Newton, Massachusetts during the early 1970s. Mother belonged to an art group who hired a model for their own sketch sessions. I was there for some of them and made my own drawings, but I didn't take the photos. Some of the images show the details of the room and my mother is also shown in a couple of them, drawing on a sketchpad.

This little nude study is derived from one of the model sessions. I still remember doing art there and somewhere my images from that era gather dust in my closet.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

This rather old-fashioned drawing is an illustration for one of the "Lythande Wizard" stories of Marion Zimmer Bradley. I did it for "Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine," which always featured at least one story by her in each issue. This story starred the female-to-male cross-dressing wizard, "Lythande." She was compelled to wear men's clothing and pass as a man as the price of sneaking into an all-male wizards' academy dressed as a man.

This story was called "The Wuzzles," and was about a village that had been invaded by magical, grain-eating fuzzballs, similar to Tribbles, called "Wuzzles." Wuzzles could only be defeated by magic, but the wizard Lythande was allergic to the magic and couldn't use it without a counter-charm. That, in my memory, was provided by a young male herbalist who later pairs up with the buxom girl you see in the background.

This illustration has a lot of inkwork in it, all done by hand before any computers could do such things.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

This little guy is known as an "exciter." He doesn't look very exciting, but when it comes to magnetic fields in a hydroelectric power station, he's the buzz. I found him in a book of photos of antique industrial structures. I'm inspired by the bioindustrial surrealism of the Swedish artist Simon Stalenhag (see my links list at right) and by the weird little characters of Australian-Chinese artist Shaun Tan. Steal from the best, if I'm gonna steal ideas and images.

I'm trying to fill up the empty spaces in my sketchbook journal. I wanted there to be a drawing on every page but I had so little time because of the estate business that I had to leave a blank area on the pages so I could make a drawing for it later. I suppose by journalkeeping rules this is not proper as the drawings are not chronologically linked to the written word entries. There are artists who make drawings every damn day, I don't know how they do it. I wonder if Shaun Tan does. If so, more awesome to him. I will think up a new format for Journal 2017.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Back in the world of the "Haven" game here's a scene of a typical street in this late medieval city. This district is nicknamed the "Cleff" because it caters to musicians and is near a music school. You can shop for musical instruments here or you can hire an ensemble for your next event. You can see two men negotiating on the lower left, one of them with a lute slung across his back. I tried to create an alphabet for their signs which ended up looking a bit like Armenian or Ethiopian script.

Black ink on illustration board, 8 1/2" x 5", July 1984.

Note to Regina: Jews in the Middle Ages were required to wear distinguishing clothing such as the pointed hats and Jewish star badges, much like later 20th century Nazi rulings. This differed from one region to another. A very comprehensive history of this can be found here on this information-rich site.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Fantasy author Katherine Kurtz set her "Deryni" tales in about the year 1300, in what used to be called the "High Middle Ages," the time of the great cathedrals, courtly love, knights in shining armor, and magic and witchcraft. Magic in this fantasy world is really psychic powers, magic done as medieval science. The people of the world are two different groups who can intermarry and have hybrid children: the empowered Deryni and the ordinary folk without powers.

In Kurtz's medieval lands, most of the people were white, as Europeans and Celtic folk would be. Her Deryni were even more Nordic in their pale coloration and blonde or red hair. The question arose, was there a diversity of races and ethnicities on the Earth of Deryni? Katherine introduced some Black and Arabic characters in her later books, some of whom had magic powers, possibly because they were hybrids from Deryni travelers or warriors. But another very important question was, were there Jews in the Deryni medieval world. Katherine wrote about prejudice and atrocities perpetrated against the Deryni folk but at least in her "mainstream" books she didn't mention any Jews. So fan writers took up the challenge and wrote some stories in that world which had Jewish characters. As a fan illustrator I was asked to create an image for one of these stories. A Jewish wizard is using Kabbalistic magic to create a sacred circle with a 6 pointed Jewish star. He is wearing the peculiar pointed hat that was imposed on medieval Jews as an ethnic sign. Then the question is, did the Deryni interbreed with Jews and produce empowered Jewish hybrids, or did the Jews of Deryniworld have their own powers. Katherine has never explained where the Deryni came from, although I think of them as Tolkien-ish elves who have forgotten their heritage. Jewish elves? No one has done this, and perhaps they shouldn't.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

"Tysons Corner" sounds like a quaint little village in rural Virginia, but it hasn't been that way since the 1960s. It's a built-up futuristic city which I call "Tysonia." There's an elevated railway and a number of skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings, most of them ugly. The building in this sketch is often cited as the ugliest of them all, featuring a large circular hole in the center rimmed by a strip of white concrete, reminding everyone of an enormous toilet. I was at this building for banking on September 2 and was able to do a sketch in their recently rebuilt courtyard. You can see part of the toilet seat archway at left. The fat cylinders in the foreground are plastic seats for people to park themselves on. There is a new restaurant behind the little columns, which I have not tried. In the background is the communications tower on top of Tysons Corner's hill and part of the vast Koons car lot. I must confess, I messed up and messed with the perspective so I could get more architectural detail into the picture.

Friday, September 2, 2016

The clients, the House of Stasheff, are satisfied with my revision so we are ready to go. This is the major art project I was telling you about. It is the "cover" for the e-book (and possible future paper publication) of Christopher Stasheff's THE WARLOCK ROCK, originally published in 1990. Stasheff, now retired from writing, wrote many series of rollicking, funny tales of fantasy and light-hearted science fiction. The "Warlock" series featured a whole family of magical folks on a world where magic works. This book was a punfest on the theme of "rock music," where the medievaloid kingdom is invaded by a proliferation of singing, noise-making rocks. Wordplay abounds, all of it involving rock music history, artists, song lyrics, or images. In this cover image, one of the family (girl at left) is taken up with the beat while "Fess," the big robot horse, meets a wooden aspirant to a noble steed. In the background is an ethereal electric guitar. Click on image for larger view.Here are some details: Mechanical horses meet.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Here's a sketch of the outside of the "Mystic Valley Inn," where the upper class of travelers and diners stays in "Haven" city. The lavish inn also offers numerous magical amenities as well as discreet sorcerous services. This can include everything from magic massage to an "untraceable" privacy spell for those special encounters. Be warned though, such things do not come cheaply.

Ink on illustration board, 8 1/2" x 3 1/2", July 1984. Much of my earlier gaming art such as this is poorly preserved.